The Winter Olympics certainly have grown in prestige over the years. Compare today's preparations to what they were in the 1940s. Here is the story of the ragtag 1948 Olympic hockey gold medallists from Canada. Canada had originally planned not to send a team to the Winter Olympic Games in St. Moritz, Switzerland, but the Herculean efforts of one man and his connections to the Royal Canadian Air Force got things done. In the end, the RCAF squad surprised their many critics. They went undefeated in the eight-game round-robin tourney and outscored their opponents 69-5. This mini feature was created 40 years later by CBC sports. It aired during the network's coverage of the 1988 Winter Olympic Games. Tags:OlympichockeyCanada1948goldmedallistsAdded: 1st February 2014Views: 564Rating:Posted By:Lava1964

This is the introduction of the What's My Line panelists for June 26, 1960. It was the night after a freak accident, originating from Arlene Francis' Manhattan home, in which an unfortunate passerby was killed. Arlene lived in an eighth-floor apartment at the Ritz Tower at the corner of Park Avenue and 57th Street. Eight-pound weightlifting dumbbells were used to prop open a screen window of the apartment where an air conditioning unit had been removed. On the night before this show aired, while Arlene was in Connecticut peforming in a play, a maid accidentally knocked a dumbbell out the window. It struck a luckless pedestrian on the street below and killed him! The victim, Alvin M. Rodecker, a financier from Detroit, was visiting New York City with his wife to celebrate his 60th birthday. (Rodecker's wife noted the last thing her husband said was what a wonderful time he was having.) In 1962 Francis paid Rodecker's estate $175,000 in an out-of-court settlement. The Ritz Tower paid $10,000. John Daly congratulates Arlene on appearing so soon on WML after the awful incident. Tags:WhatsMyLineArleneFrancistragedyAdded: 8th March 2009Views: 5907Rating:Posted By:Lava1964

The first black coach in the National Football League was Fritz Pollard who was a player-coach for the Akron Pros during the league's infancy way back in 1921. Pollard lived to a ripe old age: He was 92 when he died in 1986. Tags:FritzPollardNFLcoachAdded: 10th February 2008Views: 693Rating:Posted By:Lava1964

This is the original version of the video. The infamous "blackface" that was removed in is shown in this video...Enjoy Tags:taco,puttinontheritzAdded: 19th February 2008Views: 1105Rating:Posted By:rickfmdj

Taco Ockerse (born July 21, 1955), better known by his stage name Taco, is a Dutch singer. Taco gained international stardom when in 1982 he recorded a distinctive cover record of the Irving Berlin composition, "Puttin' on the Ritz" in Germany, which made him famous early the next year, peaking at #4 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100). (from wikipedia.org) Tags:tacoritzAdded: 29th July 2009Views: 57Rating:Posted By:chrissiek

Joseph Force Crater was an associate judge of the New York Supreme Court. On August 6, 1930, the 41-year-old Crater was in New York City, ostensibly on business, while his wife vacationed without him in Maine. While in New York, Crater spent time with his young showgirl mistress, Sally Lou Ritz. Crater dined with Ritz and a lawyer friend, then they attended a play. When the show ended, Crater's companions got into a taxi and watched Crater walk away...never to be seen again. After several days it was obvious to the judge's wife and colleagues that something was terribly amiss--especially when court reconvened on August 25 with Crater still absent. An investigation was launched. When the story hit the newspapers, a nationwide manhunt began. Naturally, foul play was suspected. On the morning of his disappearance, Crater's assistant had helped the judge cash two checks totaling more than $5,100. The money was put into two locked briefcases and taken to the judge's apartment. Speculation ran along the lines of Crater paying blackmail money. A grand jury trial followed, yielding 975 pages of testimony. It implicated Crater in shady real estate and financial deals, but the authorities had no success in finding any trace of the judge. (Sally Lou Ritz escaped much of the publicity--but not the gossip--when she herself vanished, never to be seen again.) Crater's wife did not return to her New York City apartment until January 31, 1931--where she found a manila envelope addressed to her in the judge's handwriting. It contained his will, $6,619 in cash, several checks, stocks, bonds, life insurance policies, and a hurriedly penned three-page personal note. The envelope had apparently been placed there after the police had searched the apartment. (Three checks were dated August 30--more than three weeks after the judge had vanished!) For several decades the term 'pulling a Judge Crater' was slang for vanishing or leaving an awkward situation discreetly. On August 19, 2005, authorities announced they had obtained a letter written by Stella Ferrucci-Good, who had recently died at age 91. The missive indicated that Judge Crater had been murdered by her late husband, a policeman, and a cab driver friend. Supposedly a skeleton found under the boardwalk at Coney Island in the 1950s was Crater's. An aquarium now occupies the site. The unidentified bones were interred in a mass grave on Hart Island, the usual spot where unclaimed corpses were commonly buried in unmarked plots. However, Ferrucci-Good's story has a major hole: no record exists of a body ever being found under the Coney Island boardwalk. Tags:JudgeCraterdisappearanceAdded: 16th September 2009Views: 1330Rating:Posted By:Lava1964

Canada's Barabara Ann Scott is photographed doing a 'stag leap' in this photograph from December 1947. Two months later, at age 19, she would win the women's figure skating gold medal at the 1948 Winter Olympics in St. Moritz, Switzerland. At the opening ceremonies for the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver, the 81-year-old Scott was one of the dignitaries who brought the Olympic flag into the stadium. Tags:BarbaraAnnScottfigureskaterOlympicsAdded: 18th February 2010Views: 1092Rating:Posted By:Lava1964

This is a photo of Canada's first Olympic hockey team. At the inaugural Winter Olympics in Chamonix, France in 1924, Canada sent a local amateur team (the Toronto Granites) to compete against the world's best. The results were horribly lopsided, to say the least: Playing three games in three days, Canada overwhelmed their Pool 'A' opponents. The Canadians thumped Czechoslovakia 30-0, Sweden 22-0, and Switzerland 33-0. In the medal round, Canada beat Great Britain 19-2 and the United States 6-1 to capture the gold medals. (Entering that final game, the Americans had outscored Belgium, France, Great Britain and Sweden by an aggregate score of 72-0.) Overall, Canada outscored its five opponents 110-3. Harry Watson scored 37 of Canada's goals. The Canadians' victory was so decisive that Canada was awarded an automatic bye into the final round at the next Winter Olympics in St. Moritz, Switzerland in 1928. None of the Canadians ever played pro hockey. Tags:hockeyOlympicsCanadaAdded: 4th March 2010Views: 610Rating:Posted By:Lava1964